José Francisco Borges (Bezerros – PE, 1935) is a xylographer and a Brazilian cordel artist. A self-taught person, he began writing and selling cordéis, but his xylograph has made his fame in the region. Normally used to illustrate the cordel literature, today xylograph has reached many other media, being one of the marks of the Brazilian Northeastern Culture.

At the request of the Football Museum, he created this xylograph for the celebration of the ten years of the institution. In our visit to his studio and memorial in the town of Bezerros, we got surprised with the information that J. Borges had already lived at the Pacaembu Stadium, where the museum is currently located. The artist told us his adventures with a group of artists, musicians, and poets from the Brazilian Northeast that traveled the Country in the 1980s, in a “Caravan of Poets”, an initiative to promote the agrarian reform.

Pacaembu Stadium was immortalized in a text written by J. Borges, which will be read by people from several Brazilian cities in this itinerant exhibition.